The Off Topic Lounge: Summer of Nothing Edition

Best Buy, Future Shop and EBGames have all raised their game prices in Canada by $5 or so. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is now $54.99 instead of $49.99 ... and new stuff for pre-order like Destiny are priced at $64.99. Why do Canadians have to pay $5 more? They did this early last generation too and randomly dropped them back to normal prices again...

I read that it might be a result of the falling cdn dollar. I don't usually pick up games at full price these days but this is still stupid.

Kinda makes next-gen even more unappealing for me: $400/500 console + 65 dollar games + taxes

Yeah... but they did this last generation too, it didn't last too long.

I've stopped picking up most games at full price too, but the Nintendo games never drop, so kind of stuck there.

@haziqonfire: Speaking of Nintendo games, i've noticed that 3DS games have gone on sale more often than with DS games. A lot of the newer games like LM, AC, Pokemon could be had for $25 in December.

Mario Kart DS is still 45 freakin dollars for crying out loud!

I just finished the Bravely Default demo 100%. The game clock says eight hours but the activity log says nine. That's a pretty amazing thing for a free demo. I feel like I've mastered the combat already.... It makes me wonder if the overall effect of the demo on my experience of the full game will be positive or negative. The time between now and release should be long enough that I won't burn out on it before it's over, but apparently it's a long game....

Regardless, I'm still really excited for it, more so now that I've played almost ten hours of it and like it even more than when I started.

I'm also getting increasingly excited for Dark Souls 2. I'm totally ready for that kind of experience again. The first game absolutely consumed me for a couple of months, and I can't wait to go through that again.

@JordanElek: What is this "Dark Souls" thing you refer to? :P

@JordanElek: I really need to start playing the demo before the game releases. I downloaded it and kind of picked a bad day to try it out. It was like 10pm and I was feeling particular tired that night; needless to say, not the best time to try to understand how everything works.

Might give it a shot this weekend. I still haven't touched a game all week since finishing Xenoblade on sunday.

@moltenix: The demo is really easy to play in short bursts, like less than five minutes, which is awesome, because most RPGs require a dedication of time that usually doesn't work well with a handheld, at least for me.

I hope the final game is set up in the same way. It seems like it will be, unless there are long periods of dialogue or scripted segments that don't let you save. Dungeons will probably require a good chunk of time to get through since you can't save anywhere in them, but that's what sleep mode is for, I guess.

@wiifan001: By the way, curse you wiifan for bringing up the FF6 soundtrack..... I listened to it last night while working and remembered what a masterpiece it was!

I haven't played it for at least 6 or more months and I was at the last dungeon. Now I have a real urge to play it (game music does that to me more than you know) and I was doing great cruising along in other games... Because my backlog wasn't menacing enough! ;)

Seriously though... What a soundtrack. Xenoblade' pulled me away from it but now I think I'll put it back in the rotation.

I've almost listened to all of the Xenoblade soundtrack. The walking around tracks are easily the best in the game. There are a lot more scene-specific tracks than I would've guessed, but none of them really affect me like the ones that play while you're just exploring an area. I think the awkward voice acting took away a lot of the punch of those scenes and pushed the music out of focus, because I don't really remember any of it.

But as soon as that boss theme hits, holy crap. All the memories come pouring back.

Midevil RPG for PS4 and X1 called Kingdom Come:Deliverence coming in 2015 looks promising! Open world, customization, etc.

I also dl'd the Lightning Returns FF13 demo, looking forward to trying it tonight. Never finished 13 or played 13-2 but want to try it anyway.

Yeah Kingdom Come looks really interesting. I hope it's good, its a neat concept, but no magic, fantastical creatures, or much reasure off the beaten path makes me think it may just be a big empty world with little worth exploring. Hope it proves me wrong!

Roman Reigns should have freekin won.

But no, it's all about the Breakfast Club

Anyone here ever restored a bicycle before? I figured I'd give it a shot before I scrap my old one and buy a 300 dollar bike. Going to convert it to a single speed and repaint it

The Way of Kings is a really great book. It took a while for it to click with me but I'm really liking it and I'm finally reading it at a good pace, hopefully being able to finish before the sequel in March.

Coming off of reading all five A Song of Ice and Fire books back to back, with Ender's Game right after, I kind of just got tired of reading but I'm quickly coming back into it.

Now if only I could do the same with games...

What's the end goal? I was going mountain biking a couple of summers ago two or three times a week. That was so much fun, such a good workout. Then last summer, the guy I'd go with had a totally opposite work schedule from me and I think we only went a couple times. We should be able to go whenever we want this summer, and I can't wait. It'll be tough building my endurance back up again because it's such an intense thing, but it's totally worth it.

I assume you won't be mountain biking with a single speed, though. Are you just going to ride it around town or something?

PS4 may be able to run PS1 and 2 games in the future... The value of that console just dramatically increased for me if the rumor is true.

@JordanElek: Just want to ride it around town. Mrs. WreckEm711 has a good cruiser but with my bike in such horrible shape we dont ride as much as we'd like. Mountain biking is really fun but given the distance of the nearest mountain to us, its just not really worth having an 18 speed mountain bike :P

I have been trying to get everything stripped off of the frame pretty much since I posted yesterday, FINALLY got everything off, rust and corrosion had stuff stuck on there pretty bad. Fortunately the frame is actually in excellent shape, going to take a hacksaw to the brake and cable supports to give it a little cleaner look, then its all getting stripped down and painted before going to get new parts for it :D Worked it out and it'll cost about $150 to get everything I need to completely restore my bike and repaint my wifes, plus its really fun work haha..

@ttualumni13: That's awesome that you bike together. I bet in your neck of the woods you can bike all year... I never liked biking, I used to be a runner but haven't done so in almost a year and a half. Been getting the itch to start up again with some buddies.

Does anyone else find it hilarious when a CEO announces he's slashing his pay in half? What- you're going from $10 million annually down to $5 million... Rough life!

@roboccs: Yeah we have beautiful weather except for a few weeks in december, and then pretty much all of january and then a few weeks in feb. -7 windchill yesterday morning, miserable -_-

I used to run too! Not really big on it now though, I feel like I hardly have enough time in the day as it is, and it feels like a big time sink. At least one a bike I feel like we're having fun while we're exercising haha

@roboccs: Iwata did that last year too, he took a pay cut and so did Miyamoto. Seems like it's common place in Japanese corporate culture when times are rough.

At least it shows that he's not here to just earn his share, he's here for the bigger picture.

You think?

Granted I like the idea of being able to play Digimon Card Battle and Rival Schools on the PS4 but I can't see that as a major draw for me.

Especially when the PSOne titles are so cheap when they go on sale on the PSN. I have all the Final Fantasy games digitally and I can carry them around with the Vita, I would lose that ability with the discs.

@Jaysonguy: For me it's more for my unfinished PS2 games. I have a PS2 now but my laziness prevents me from hooking it up and going to my secondary tv and playing them :P

I was also hoping that by bringing the ability to emulate, the PS4 would be able to play my digital PS1 games since I am without a PSP or Vita. Not sure if that's possible though...

Awesome Final Fantasy 13 retrospective trailer! http://m.ign.com/articles/2014/01/29/final-fantasy-xiii-reimagined-for-the-16-bit-days

It tells the FF13 story in 16-bit! SPOILERS if you haven't finished the FF13 games. I haven't but may one day so I stopped watching part way through.

The best part was the 16-bit remix of the FF13 battle music... Say what you will about the game. Love or hate the battle system, no one can deny that the standard battle music in the game was one of the best in the entire series... Now you can hear what it would have sounded like on the SNES!

@roboccs: I think I'll need to pull my stupid 360 out of retirement for Lightning Returns. That's literally the only future game I want that isn't ever releasing on PC. I'll have to wait two extra months for Dark Souls 2 on PC, but I can handle that.

Garnett Lee described the battle system in Lightning Returns in this week's Weekend Confirmed. He loved the battle systems in the first two games, and he thinks the changes in this game are a great evolution of that system. It sounds ridiculously fun. Gameplay videos are pretty much inscrutable, so I need to play it for myself to really get a feel for it.

I was going to lug my 360 out and download the demo, but I don't even know if I can. A few stories say the demo was up then pulled, then more stories say it's available but for Gold members only (my Gold just lapsed), and all of those stories are over a week old. I really don't want to hook that beast up just to figure out that I can't even play it.

@JordanElek: I dl'd the demo last weekend on PS3 so I'm guessing it's on the 360 as well. I played it for just a few minutes this morning actually because I had a few minutes to kill. The battle system seems similar to the paradigm system but you cycle through the different "schema" and each has different attacks that can be used for different situations. Not sure how fighting as one person will be but you can move around freely. I only watched a long cut scene that I didn't really understand and fought one battle before I ran out of time so I couldn't tell if it was good or not. I'm sure if you liked the other games this one will be enjoyable as well. The whole battle against time mechanic stresses me out though! Probably why I didn't care for Majoras Mask all that much.

Did we already know that X is coming out this year? It's on Nintendo's 2014 release list for NA. I assumed it would be out in several years considering the scope of a game like that. I haven't heard anybody even mention it, though.

@JordanElek: Thats good tentative news, I assumed it would be 2014 but with the complete lack of any info since the last trailer, I was getting worried. Keep in mind they've been working on this since they finished Xenoblade, which was quite a bit earlier than it was released in the US! Since their team expanded, I would guess holiday 2014 would be just about right, unless Nintendo wants to delay for extra polish, which may literally kill me.

@JordanElek: Yeah, they initially said 2014 but I didn't believe it. I'm still not completely convinced but this is encouraging at least.

I'd honestly be a little surprised if X came out this year. I don't think we've really heard much about it have we? Not much news on it at all, so I'm thinking early 2015. Who knows though.

Yeah, it doesn't seem like the kind of game that can come out the same year in Japan and the rest of the world. Unless they're doing localization as they go, which they might be, I can't imagine it coming out in NA any earlier than a year after it does in Japan.

surprised Jason didn't mention it, but Lococycle is coming out on steam. awesome!!

Finally doing a Wii to Wii U system transfer so I can play all my WiiWare games offscreen.. Nintendo did a really good job on it, having the little pikmin run around bringing information across the little bridges and through corridors is such a Nintendo-style detail.

Unfortunately this renders my greatest console of all time to a simple netflix machine :( Sad day.

I've still got quite a way to go before I finish 3D World, this weekend I'm more free so hopefully I can finish it and then start Wind Waker HD or Pikmin 3. I've also got my 3DS but I'm shipping it out soon to Nintendo for repairs (again), but at least they're awesome about it and pay for shipping and whatnot.

Retro game kick! Fire Emblem GBA then Dragon Quest V :D

[IMG]http://i1322.photobucket.com/albums/u574/HDH82541/image_zps0b278114.jpg[/IMG]

@ttualumni13: I've always been intrigued by DQV because I read the story is a progression through life and is very good. Never pulled the trigger on it though because I've played a few DQ games but the original NES Dragon Warrior is the only one that kept me engaged, and I was young back then!

This is why I want GBA games to be released on the WiiU VC, I could cheaply introduce myself to the Fire Emblem series.

My quality of life is much improved by the new title of this thread.

@roboccs: I'll let you know if I get anything out of it, it seems like it will be really interesting, so heres to hoping!

@Haziqonfire Your new pic is awesome. I'm really excited for DKCTF. It's one of two games that sold me on the Wii U, and while I've enjoyed the other games I've played on it, there's always that special excitement when THE game you've been hoping for gets released :D

@ttualumni13: That will be my excitement when X finally arrives!!

Yeah I can't wait for it, especially after some of the latest footage. I wasn't big on it initially but it looks really good.

Bravely Default is still the game I can't wait to play. Less than a week!

Also, I thought my iPod Touch was dead AGAIN this morning, so I was getting ready to buy a new one, even going so far as the iPod screen on the Apple Store page. But after working on it all day, it's totally fixed... I had to do a full factory reset with no backup, but now it's running much more smoothly.

@JordanElek: This is how I've felt about my Wii U the last few weeks, the stupid thing keeps locking up and making that insufferable BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE of doom. But then when I get ready to send it to Nintendo (Which I'm hesitant to do given my 3DS experience with "repairs") it starts working regularly again... so... I'm unsure. I'm even less prepared to send it in since I finally moved over all my Wii save files.

@ttualumni13: You haven't been playing ACIV, have you? I got that error all the time in AC3 before they finally patched it.

@JordanElek: No im actually getting it in the system menu, home menu, friends list,and miiverse. Sometimes miiverse is unusable because of it, have to unplug the console with each freeze. :(

Super Bowl was a bust, seems like its disappointing almost every year lol.

Wii U seems to be regressing. Managed to play for about thirty minutes today before it started hardfreezing and requiring me to unplug it to get it going again, happened about five times so I gave up and packed it up. Going to call Nintendo to see about getting it repaired, hopefully its under warranty, I don't remember if it was 6 months or 12.

In other news, picked up a Vita today in preparation for picking up a PS4 once they become a bit more readily available. Looking forward to offscreen play for games like Elder Scrolls online!! A bit pricey for what I will essentially be using as a peripheral, but the convenience and having my wife happy that I'm not hoarding the TV will make it more than worth it haha.

I stopped watching after 22-0, so before half time

@ttualumni13: I'm jealous of you! I will eventually get the PS4 but I can't justify the Vita too. While it looks great for off screen and this is my favorite feature of the WiiU, there's no other purpose for it because I don't believe it has much of a game library.

@roboccs: Yeah it really doesn't have much of a library or upcoming titles haha. There are some good ones like Soul Sacrifice, Persona 4, KZ M ercinary, FFX HD, and then the occasional console port that I wouldn't mind being able to play on the go like Minecraft, Borderlands 2, and The Walking Dead. Bunch of the PS1 classics too.

I don't expect I'll get too many games for it, especially once I get a PS4, but it'll be nice to have the extra bit of games to choose from :)

The Vita is the RPG device for this generation, where the 3DS dropped the ball the Vita is the one getting all of the titles.